International fans coming for Emmet’s MAC concert next week

Eilís Ryan

Wherever his suitcase is, that is where Mullingar tenor Emmet Cahill calls home these days – but the good news for local fans is that the suitcase will be back in these parts next week.

Emmet is booked to do a one-night performance at Mullingar Arts Centre on May 7, which is likely to be one of the last opportunities local audiences will get to see him until the Fleadh Cheoil, when he hopes to be doing a concert at the cathedral in Mullingar.

This is no ordinary concert, however, for 80 of the audience’s places are going to be filled by a party of international fans who are joining Emmet for a nine-day trip around Ireland – and Emmet is really looking forward to introducing them to his home town – of which he is immensely proud.

“I did a similar bus trip in 2019 or so. Fans from around the world came to Ireland and we showed them around. So again, we have 80 people coming from America, Canada, Australia, some from Europe, and for the second day of the trip I’m taking them all around Mullingar.

“In the morning, I’m bringing them out to Belvedere; I’m hoping to get them to Uisneach; I’m bringing them up to the cathedral for Mass in the morning; then we’ll have the concert that evening, and we’re all staying at the Bloomfield.

“They’re all going to experience Mullingar hospitality – which I’ve told them is fantastic. So I’m sure it will be,” he says, speaking by phone from Houston in Texas, one of the venues on his current American solo tour, which he launched into pretty much straight after a two-month tour with the ‘Celtic Thunder’ ensemble of Irish tenors, of which he has been a long-term stalwart.

The concert at Mullingar Arts Centre means a lot to Emmet – and so delighted is he to be returning to the venue that he has invited his brother Aaron and sister Laura – both gifted musical talents – to perform on stage with him.

Also part of the lineup is pianist Seamus Brett, Emmet’s accompanist, and who like Emmet, and indeed Aaron, is a graduate of the prestigious Schola Cantorum at St Finian’s College.

Life is busy for Emmet, and post the pandemic, he’s been enjoying being back on stage, even though, as it happens, he was far from idle during the long months of Covid.

“Basically once the lockdown started, I moved home,” he says.

“I was I was in the middle of a tour – March 20 – I was in New York. I had my parents (Martin and Carmel) over: they were over seeing some concerts and were down in Florida. Everything just went: doors closed, so I flew home to kind of wait it out and see what would happen.”

As it happened, he wound up home for about 18 months – but he managed to adapt his work so that he could continue to entertain: “I’m lucky that I have been doing online content streaming concerts for a couple of years – infrequently, you know, maybe once or twice a year – but they became hugely important.”

In addition, he and his Celtic Thunder colleagues started filming documentaries in Ireland on different aspects of Irish culture for their following in the US: “I’d go out with a camera crew: I was down in Cork, I was up in Derry; I was over in Dublin, doing anything from music to history to literature; I did a whole documentary on Knock.

“So, we started to work in that way. And that has continued. We just streamed a series of concerts this week that we filmed as a campervan trip around Ireland last August and September. That only aired online last week for fans over here in America. So that’s kind of been one of the silver linings that came out of this, and people have been loving it and it is something very different.”

In September of 2021, Emmet was able to move back to the US: “I had a tour booked, and I got an exemption letter to get back into America – because they didn’t open the borders till November I think, officially – so I got over to tour. I had some commitments with some theatres and churches over here.”

He’s been on the road a lot since then, touring during February and March with Celtic Thunder and getting ready then for his current solo tour.

The concert Emmet is hosting at Mullingar Arts Centre on May 7 is one of several he will give for the visitors – but as it his hometown gig, he wants to make it special for them, and thus he is thrilled that his brother and sister have agreed to participate.

“Music was a huge part of our lives growing up: we always sang and played. We had a quartet when I was younger – myself and my dad, my brother, sister.”

All credit for that early musical training goes to Emmet’s father, a piano teacher who also sometimes plays the organ in the cathedral.

The entire programme for the party of visiting fans has been devised jointly by Emmet and Seamus Brett: “We have worked with a bus company based in Donegal. We’re going to take them to Westport. We’re going to stay in Lough Eske Castle in Donegal. We’re taking them to Derry and to The Giant’s Causeway and then finishing in Belfast, so we’re kind of doing the north and the west. Most people go to Kerry – which is stunning – but we’re just doing things a bit differently,” says Emmet, adding that Knock and Cong also feature on the nine-day tour.

Back to that question of where home is these days, Emmet says that between tours, he is mainly in New York: “I’m working with an opera teacher as I’m still pursuing classical music and opera. That’s the plan over the next few years, hopefully, to do more and more of that. So I have a fantastic coach in New York and I work with him when I’m not on the road, or if I’m not home seeing family. So New York is kind of the ‘home between homes’.”

Emmet believes it’s not entirely accidental that so many great musical talents have come out of Mullingar: “I think there’s a great passion for music and just the arts in general in Mullingar; we have a wonderful arts centre, you’re never stuck for entertainment. I mean, I think they punch well above their weight in terms of who they get in.”

The scene is helped, he believes, by events such as the bachelor festival and the fleadh.

“It’s all fantastic and it’s only getting better and I think we’re kind of the best kept secret at the minute, but when we get lots and lots of people in for the fleadh in August, I think the word will be out.”

The Schola Cantorum has also helped, he believes: “It is a unique thing. And the purpose of it originally was to enhance liturgical music and make sure that tradition was being carried on, so it certainly has done that. I mean, I’m here in America performing in churches as well as theatres and it is something that I get involved when I go home – I’m pretty involved in the cathedral in Mullingar, as are a lot of ex-pupils of St Finian’s, so it certainly has achieved that in spades and continues to do so.

“So yeah, it definitely does represent a part of the musical identity of Mullingar for sure.”

• Emmet Cahill in concert at Mullingar Arts Centre on May 7. Tickets from Arts Centre box office on 044 9347777.